24,819 research outputs found
Deferred compensation and gift exchange: an experimental investigation into multi-period labor markets
This paper examines the relationship between firmsâ wage offers and workersâ
supply of effort using a three-period experiment. In equilibrium, firms will offer deferred
compensation: first period productivity is positive and wages are zero, while third period
productivity is zero and wages are positive. The experiment produces strong evidence
that deferred compensation increases worker effort; in about 70 percent of cases subjects
supplied the optimal effort given the wage offer, and there was a strong effort response to
future-period wages. We also find some evidence of gift exchange; worker players
increased the effort levels in response to above equilibrium wage offers by a human, but
not in response to similar offers by a computer. Finally, we find that firm players who are
initially hesitant to defer compensation learn over time that it is beneficial to do so
Assessment of free-living nitrogen fixing microorganisms for commercial nitrogen fixation
Ammonia production by Klebsiella pneumoniae is not economical with present strains and improving nitrogen fixation to its theoretical limits in this organism is not sufficient to achieve economic viability. Because the value of both the hydrogen produced by this organism and the methane value of the carbon source required greatly exceed the value of the ammonia formed, ammonia (fixed nitrogen) should be considered the by-product. The production of hydrogen by KLEBSIELLA or other anaerobic nitrogen fixers should receive additional study, because the activity of nitrogenase offers a significant improvement in hydrogen production. The production of fixed nitrogen in the form of cell mass by Azotobacter is also uneconomical and the methane value of the carbon substrate exceeds the value of the nitrogen fixed. Parametric studies indicate that as efficiencies approach the theoretical limits the economics may become competitive. The use of nif-derepressed microorganisms, particularly blue-green algae, may have significant potential for in situ fertilization in the environment
Design for a space molecular sink simulator
Space molecular sink vacuum syste
Study of orifice fabrication technologies for the liquid droplet radiator
Eleven orifice fabrication technologies potentially applicable for a liquid droplet radiator are discussed. The evaluation is focused on technologies capable of yielding 25-150 microns diameter orifices with trajectory accuracies below 5 milliradians, ultimately in arrays of up to 4000 orifices. An initial analytical screening considering factors such as trajectory accuracy, manufacturability, and hydrodynamics of orifice flow is presented. Based on this screening, four technologies were selected for experimental evaluation. A jet straightness system used to test 50-orifice arrays made by electro-discharge machining (EDM), Fotoceram, and mechanical drilling is discussed. Measurements on orifice diameter control and jet trajectory accuracy are presented and discussed. Trajectory standard deviations are in the 4.6-10.0 milliradian range. Electroforming and EDM appear to have the greatest potential for Liquid Droplet Radiator applications. The direction of a future development effort is discussed
Low-energy interaction of composite spin-half systems with scalar and vector fields
We consider a composite spin-half particle moving in spatially-varying scalar
and vector fields. The vector field is assumed to couple to a conserved charge,
but no assumption is made about either the structure of the composite or its
coupling to the scalar field. A general form for the piece of the spin-orbit
interaction of the composite with the scalar and vector fields which is
first-order in momentum transfer and second-order in the fields is
derived.Comment: 10 pages, RevTe
Optimizing multi-dimensional terahertz imaging analysis for colon cancer diagnosis
Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Efficient Universal Noiseless Source Codes
Although the existence of universal noiseless variable-rate codes for the class of discrete stationary ergodic sources has previously been established, very few practical universal encoding methods are available. Efficient implementable universal source coding techniques are discussed in this paper. Results are presented on source codes for which a small value of the maximum redundancy is achieved with a relatively short block length. A constructive proof of the existence of universal noiseless codes for discrete stationary sources is first presented. The proof is shown to provide a method for obtaining efficient universal noiseless variable-rate codes for various classes of sources. For memoryless sources, upper and lower bounds are obtained for the minimax redundancy as a function of the block length of the code. Several techniques for constructing universal noiseless source codes for memoryless sources are presented and their redundancies are compared with the bounds. Consideration is given to possible applications to data compression for certain nonstationary sources
Observation of Single Transits in Supercooled Monatomic Liquids
A transit is the motion of a system from one many-particle potential energy
valley to another. We report the observation of transits in molecular dynamics
(MD) calculations of supercooled liquid argon and sodium. Each transit is a
correlated simultaneous shift in the equilibrium positions of a small local
group of particles, as revealed in the fluctuating graphs of the particle
coordinates versus time. This is the first reported direct observation of
transit motion in a monatomic liquid in thermal equilibrium. We found transits
involving 2 to 11 particles, having mean shift in equilibrium position on the
order of 0.4 R_1 in argon and 0.25 R_1 in sodium, where R_1 is the nearest
neighbor distance. The time it takes for a transit to occur is approximately
one mean vibrational period, confirming that transits are fast.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figure
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